Free Alex Smith's Hat!

Yesterday, Alex Smith revealed that the NFL has threatened him with $15,000 fines if he continues to wear his San Francisco Giants cap during press conferences. It's non-approved gear from a competing league, you see, and that's not cool. Postgame is prime time for marketing NFL products, and the league isn't about to give MLB any free advertising. (Despite the fact that New Era makes both baseball and football caps.)

But Smith's cap is a good luck charm, and it also happens to be some much-appreciated crosstown support for the playoff-bound Giants. So this has become A Thing. Capgate, I'd call it, if I were totally unimaginative.

Capgate has gone to the next level, as Giants manager Bruce Bochy donned a 49ers hat during interviews before this afternoon's game at AT&T Park. "This is in honor of Alex," Bochy said. And this was no empty gesture—Bochy had to go to great lengths to stand together with his neighbors to the South. Bochy's notoriously giant head is too big for the biggest Niners cap on hand, so the AP reports the Giants' equipment manager had to put a smaller one in the dryer to stretch it out.

You get the feeling the NFL is going to back down from punishing Smith. They generally—generally—have a sense of what rules aren't worth the bad PR, and this seems like one of them. The alternative? A citywide day of solidarity, when Niners ticketholders wear Giants gear, and vice versa. Which would be pretty cool, actually. We are at DEFCAP 4.

Photo comes via CSN Bay Area's Jaymee Sire. Jaymee? If you have a Google alert out on your name and you see this, stop using Instagram filters.